@@ Mr. Black, our problem with you goes mush farther back than 1950's @@
Arash
October 21, 2005
Back to the future
Heightening tensions over Iraq and Tehran's nuclear ambitions are reminiscent of the
bad old days of Anglo-Iranian relations, writes Ian Black
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2005/10/21/iran372.jpg
Iranian students demonstrate outside the British embassy in Tehran
Ian Black
Email: ian.black[AT]guardian.co.uk
History casts a long shadow as relations between Britain and Iran worsen over the
situation in Iraq, writes Ian Black
It's suddenly like the bad old days: accusations flying between capitals, crowds
chanting angry slogans outside the British embassy, ambassadors summoned to explain
their governments' positions and public insults attesting to a sudden deterioration
in a long and troubled relationship.
Chilled by winds blowing in from the desert, Anglo-Iranian relations echo the 1950s,
when the U.S. and Britain backed a coup against nationalist prime minister Mossadeq;
Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution that toppled the shah in 1979; or to the decade of
tensions over the fatwa ordering the killing of Salman Rushdie.
Now a fresh layer is being added to this mound of weighty historical baggage by
Britain's military presence in Iraq and the confrontation over the Tehran's nuclear
ambitions.
The latest trouble began in August when talks between the EU and Iran, with Britain
in the lead, broke down over the demand that Iran suspend nuclear reprocessing
activities because of suspicions it was secretly planning to produce nuclear weapons.
The EU initiative was launched in 2003 in order to avoid another Iraq-type situation
with the U.S. on one side of the argument and a divided and impotent Europe on the
other. It has always been viewed with suspicion by the Bush administration, which
favors sticks over carrots, and it was always hard to see how a serious clash could
be avoided. Britain, said a scornful Iranian official as the bilateral temperature
plummeted, was acting like a "19th century colonial power".
Matters worsened in June when Iranians elected a new hardline president, Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad, the mayor of Tehran. But the flashpoint this time was in the volatile
south of Iraq. Anonymous British officials - followed by Tony Bliar himself - warned
that Iran was not only supporting Shia militias operating against UK forces in the
Basra area, but arming them.
The alleged evidence was sophisticated amour-piercing explosives and infrared control
mechanisms similar to equipment used by Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla movement
with years of experience fighting Israel with backing from Iran.
This week, Iran retaliated and took the row a step further, with the president
accusing British agents of being behind bomb attacks which killed six people in the
southern city of Ahvaz, capital of Khuzestan province, the heart of Iran's oil
industry, and just across the border from Iraq.
"Our people are used to these kind of incidents, and our intelligence agents found
the footprints of Britain in the same incidents before", Ahmadinejad told his
cabinet. "We think the presence of British forces in southern Iraq and near the
Iranian border is a factor behind insecurity for the Iraqi and Iranian people".
Britain has forcefully denied any link with the bombings as well as similar attacks
in June. These were blamed on Arab terrorists with ties to unnamed foreign
intelligence services. Iranian security officials reportedly concluded that the
bombers were trained abroad and that weapons and equipment were smuggled in from
Iraq's al-Amara province, which is under British control.
Khuzestan has often reflected wider tensions: Saddam's intelligence services backed
secessionists amongst the province's Arab population, and it was they who took over
the Iranian embassy in London in the famous 1980 siege ended by the SAS.
In Tehran, the president's remarks were picked up enthusiastically by the
conservative media. The Kayhan newspaper called for a severing of diplomatic
relations between the two countries and demanded the closure of the "den of spies".
It was not the first time the epithet has been applied to the British embassy, still
in the sprawling walled compound bordered by Bobby Sands Avenue. It used to be called
Winston Churchill Avenue but was renamed to honor the IRA Maze hunger striker during
the angry period after the collapse of the Peacock throne.
In those days Britain was routinely vilified in Iran as the "little Satan", while the
"great Satan", of course, was the U.S., still resentful a quarter of a century later
over the 444-day occupation of its embassy by the "student militants" who swept to
power with Khomeini.
The old Ayatollah once gave a sermon in which he said that the days were gone when
the British ambassador could issue instructions to the Shah. And one of his most
frequently quoted sayings, daubed for a time on the walls of the embassy was that
"America is worse than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is worse than America.
Britain is worse than both".
Diplomats suggest Iran is deliberately exploiting the Khuzetsan incidents to divert
attention from domestic problems, and perhaps to hit back at Britain for its role in
the nuclear talks. To underline the point, bilateral trade has been slowed by a
sudden bout of red tape.
British officials suspect that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, linked to the most
conservative elements in Tehran, is working with the Shia militias who have been
making life difficult for the 8500 British troops in Iraq.
These tensions are part of a new reality that has greatly enhanced Iran's influence
in Iraq. Having watched one old enemy - Washington - deal effectively with another -
Saddam - Tehran is now reaping the rewards.
Last January's Iraqi elections produced a winning coalition of Shia groups, led by
the Islamic DAWA party and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq
(SCIRI), both based in Tehran while Saddam was in power. The new relationship was
sealed in wide-ranging agreements signed between the two governments in the summer.
Iranian agents have found it easy to penetrate Iraq's security and intelligence
services, especially since the Iraqi interior minister is the former head of the BADR
Corps, the Iranian-created and funded military arm of SCIRI. The BADR brigades, like
the Kurdish peshmerga in the north, and now being incorporated into the Iraqi
military.
In southern Iraq the portraits of Saddam have been replaced by those of Shia clerics
and Khomeini - the same Khomeini believed by the Shah to have organized his
revolution with the help of messages broadcast on the BBC's Persian service, part of
that old Iranian obsession with perfidious Albion. Now that British squaddies are
patrolling the streets of Basra, it is no wonder that old animosities and suspicions
are coming to the surface again.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1597910,00.html